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+title: "Thing" avoidance
+description: Thing avoidance is the cost of not doing something. It's the inverse of opportunity costs. It's the cost of not asking for feedback from a stakeholder who will torpedo your project if they're not involved. It's the cost of not doing something that you know that you should do, but may not want to.
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+Economists have long had the concept of "opportunity costs". An opportunity cost is the loss of potential gain when you choose one alternative over another. If you invest in project X, you're forgoing the opportunity to invest in project Y, and any potential success that project Y might have. Project X's success is the "cost" of project Y's success (or lack thereof).
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+"Thing avoidance" is the inverse of this concept. It's the cost of *not* doing something. Lets say you're working on a new initiative, and there's a stakeholder who while they provide terrible feedback, they're also the type of person who will torpedo your project if they're not involved. If you don't proactively engage then from the onset, it would become "a thing" that you have to manage. Given that the cost of not asking for their feedback is potentially needing to spend a lot of time and effort dealing with the fallout of that decision, once might choose to take the short-term loss of asking for their feedback to avoid the long-term cost of potential project failure.
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+Thing avoidance isn't about doing something that you know that you should do, but may not want to, but rather doing something that you do because you know it would be worse if you didn't.